tag: test

Putting a variety of chips or hardened IP blocks into a package rather than trying to cram them into a single chip continues to gain ground. But it's also creating its own set of issues around verifying and testing these devices.
This problem is well understood inside of SoCs, where everything is integrated into a single die. And looked at from a 30,000-foot perspective, packaging is someth... » read more

Technology has never progressed faster than it is today, so we must think critically about where we’re headed and how we’ll get there. The NI Trend Watch provides insight into some of the biggest trends and challenges engineers will face as we accelerate into our future faster than ever before.
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We are witnessing the gradual transition of the automobile from a simple means of transportation to a mobile electronic hub. The amount of electronic content in passenger cars continues to grow rapidly. Recent reports indicate that electronics now contribute about 40% of the total costs of a traditional internal-combustion-engine car, and this jumps as high as 75% for the growing number of elec... » read more

Achieving ISO 26262 Software Tool Confidence for Improved Automotive Functional Safety The rapid adoption of advanced electronic systems in automobiles has prompted the automotive industry to develop the ISO 26262 functional safety standard to address the potential risks associated with failures in these systems. ISO 26262 is derived from the more general IEC 61508 standard and defines requirem... » read more

This paper describes a new versatile test point technology called VersaPoint, which has been developed specifically to work with designs implementing mixed EDT/LBIST methodologies to reduce EDT pattern counts and improve Logic BIST (LBIST) test coverage. VersaPoint test points can reduce compressed pattern counts 2X to 4X beyond compression alone and improve LBIST test coverage beyond what is p... » read more

By Jeff Dorsch & Ed Sperling
Semiconductor suppliers are flocking to the automotive chip market to gain share in fitting out the connected car and the autonomous vehicle. But before those chips are sold to automotive manufacturers and Tier 1 suppliers, they must be tested and certified to meet stringent industry standards.
This is no ordinary testing, though. Assisted and autonomous v... » read more

Demand for increasingly complex computation, more features, lower power, and shorter lifecycles are prompting chipmakers to examine how standardized hard IP can be used to quickly assemble systems for specific applications.
The idea of using chiplets, with or without a package, has been circulating for at least a half-dozen years, and they can trace their origin back to IBM's packaging schem... » read more

Testing microprocessors is becoming more difficult and more time consuming as these devices are designed to take on more complex tasks, such as accelerating artificial intelligence computing, enabling automated driving, and supporting deep neural networks.
This is not just limited to microprocessors, either. Graphics processing units are grabbing market share in supercomputing and other area... » read more

Test systems, like other industrial equipment, are vulnerable to cyber attacks. That requires a phased approach to cyber security, addressing the most likely threats first and communicating with suppliers to understand threats upstream in the supply chain.
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Last month, I looked at the product definition process of automotive ICs, using the $7 billion microcontroller market as an illustration of design exploration to optimize performance, features, die size and product cost. Now I’d like to look at the back end of the process — the final IC testing that’s still critical no matter how sound the upfront work in defining a featuring set and aptl... » read more